The Anatomy of Regret

Download or read book The Anatomy of Regret written by Susan Kavaler-Adler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anatomy of Regret has a highly clinical focus, with cases that illustrate how critical psychic change can emerge from the mourning of the grief of "psychic regret". This book highlights the developmental achievement of owning the guilt of aggression, and of tolerating insight into the losses one had produced. The author uses the term "psychic regret" to capture the essence of the process of facing regret consciously. This is in contrast to the split-off and persecutory dynamics of unconscious guilt. Unconscious guilt exposes itself through visceral and cognitive impingements, which are related to internal world enactments, and it relies on unconscious avoidance of the pain and loss involved in facing psychic regret. The author's theory of "developmental mourning" is illustrated in this book through in-depth lively clinical processes (cases and vignettes).